-NUGiE ETHNOLOGICAK. 179 



tors on this point, was Isaac Peyreve, librarian to the Prince of Conle, 

 who published, near the middle of tlie last century, a book which was 

 publicly burned by authority of the Sarbonne. He contended that there 

 are in Genesis two distinct creations of human beings described. The 

 first upon the sixth day (i, 27. 28.) and the second subsequently in Eden, 

 forgetting entirely, that in the passage immediately preceding the account 

 of the creation of Adam, the reason is given, "that there was not a man 

 to till the ground." In general the writers who take this view, assert 

 that thq word Adam is intended to be understood as a generic appella- 

 tion, and that the whole account is rather mythical than a literal history. 

 Every reader of Genesis must have noticed, that there runs through the 

 early part of it, in particular, a duplicate account of most transactions. 

 Whether the theory of its formation by the collocation of ancient frag- 

 mentary documents is true or not, this fact is apparent. The account in 

 that, which the critics denominate the Elohistic document, is found in 

 Gen. i, 27. 28, — that in the Jehovistic in ii, 7. 21. 22. Tiie word which 

 is given as a proper name (Adam) in our version of the latter, is trans- 

 lated 7nan in the former, and is proved to mean the whole human fami- 

 ly, or Mankind, by the succeeding declaration "male and female created 

 he them." Cahen, a learned Israelite, who has recently published a new 

 translation of the Bible in Paris, remarks on the former passage — "Adam, 

 r espece humaine, singulier collectif." In commenting on the 19th verse 

 of the 2d ch. where our version first uses the name Adam he charges 

 the Septuagint, whom we have followed, with changing a collective into 

 a proper name. Fabre- d' Olivet, in his great work, '■'•La Langue He- 

 braique Iteslituee^'' writes thus on the word Adam : "I pray those who 

 read me without partiality to remark, that Moses does not fall here into 

 the modern error which has made man a particular genus in the animal 

 kingdom ; but, after having finished all he wished to say on the element- 

 ary kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, and the animal kingdom, he passes 

 on to a distinct and more elevated kingdom wliich he names Adam. * 

 * * * This name does not signify simply "homo," a man : it char- 

 acterizes, as the Samaritan version properly has it rendered, the univer- 

 sal., what we understand by the human species^ and what we might bet- 

 ter express by the hominal kingdom ; that is, collective man, Man form- 

 ed abstractedly by the assemblage of all men. This is the proper sense 

 of the word Adam." He adopts this signification throughout, and re- 

 gards the entire Mosaic cosmogony as a splendid myth, sliadowiiig forth 

 spiritual truth under material forms. Of his pliilological erudition there 

 can be no doubt. Dr. Lamb, of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, who 

 has taken a somewhat similar view, and regards the early part of Genesis 



